Ten assailants wielded hammer, iron bar on men who wore yarmulkes near Lyon

Associated Press|Published: 03.06.12 , 21:28

The Interior Ministry says an attack by 10 assailants on three people in southeast France was anti-Semitic,
and has called for the assailants to be brought to justice. Two of the victims were hospitalized.

The office of Interior Minister Manuel Valls said Sunday that police were mobilized to arrest those behind the attack a night earlier in Villeurbaine, near the city of Lyon.

The ministry said the assailants wielded a hammer and an iron bar. One victim sustained an open wound to the head, and another suffered a neck injury. Both men wore Jewish skullcaps.

France is home to western Europe's largest Jewish community, estimated at about 500,000 people, and has intermittently faced bouts of violent anti-Semitism.

Much of France was shaken in March when a radical Muslim gunman shot dead a rabbi and three Jewish children in southwestern Toulouse.